Parents Of Victim Urge Deportation

By David Lieber, Inquirer Staff Writer

Posted: February 12, 1988

The parents of a Delaware County woman who was slain in the parking lot of her apartment development in December have begun a public-relations campaign to force Canadian authorities to deport the former boyfriend accused of killing her.

The suspect, Thomas S. Vile, has been in a Toronto jail since Dec. 5, when he was arrested by Canadian police and held on charges that he did not inform Canadian border officials that he was a convicted felon when he entered the country.

Delaware County authorities are seeking the return of Vile, 34, to the United States to try him for the Dec. 4 shotgun slaying of Irene Mace Darley Pierce, 35, in Ridley Park.

From his Toronto jail cell, Vile has turned his fight to avoid deportation into a minor cause celebre, his Canadian attorney, Charles Roach, has said. The Canadian Constitution forbids the death penalty, and Roach has said he is

helping Vile avoid returning to the United States because he could face the death penalty.

Vile has repeatedly telephoned Canadian justice officials, according to Roach, and granted interviews to Canadian reporters in which he has maintained his innocence.

To counter that, Dick Darley, a Hollywood television director who is the father of the victim, said yesterday that he and his wife had spent much time since the slaying talking to U.S. and Canadian officials and the Canadian press and describing the allegations against Vile.

"Our whole thrust is to get Vile out of Canada," Darley said in a telephone interview yesterday.

His wife, Marilyn Darley, wrote a letter to the Toronto Globe and Mail this month asking Canadians, "Please help me, in the name of justice and humanity, to have Thomas Vile deported to the United States so he can be brought to trial." The letter has not been published yet, a spokesman for the newspaper said yesterday.

Dick Darley has also written to leaders of Canada's House of Commons saying, "We believe that Canadian citizens, when fully informed, are not the kind of people who would even consider allowing such a criminal to hide behind an act established to aid and protect innocent political refugees from persecution."

Vile has said that he is a political refugee and that a return to the United States would endanger him. He probably will not be deported until his attorneys exhaust all possible appeals, Canadian immigration spokesman Roger White said yesterday. Such proceedings usually take several months, White said.

Vile's attorneys declined to comment yesterday, saying Vile had ordered them not to speak further to Philadelphia-area journalists about his case.

Delaware County prosecutor Joel Goldstein said yesterday, "We simply have to stand on the sidelines until the Canadian process does whatever it is that it's going to do. We have no power at this point to intercede and no power to expedite the deportation proceedings."

A Justice Department spokeswoman said that U.S. authorities had no plans to try to intervene in the case.

Delaware County detectives have said that Vile shot Pierce twice in the head with a double-barreled shotgun outside her apartment. Vile and Pierce had previously broken up, authorities said, but Vile allegedly told her nearly two months before the slaying, "If I can't have you, nobody will. I may get 20 years, but when I get out, you'll still be dead. Don't make me hurt you badly."

At the time of the slaying, Vile was free on $1 bail from a previous incident in which he allegedly abducted Pierce from her car.